Focus on genuine learning during the first two years of high school, and college after the 10th grade becomes an obvious choice.
For most students, junior and senior years are filled with the distractions of standardized tests, applying to colleges, and taking classes that enhance their admission prospects but don’t always engage their real interests.
Why high school for two years? What’s the rush? We’re not condensing high school: it’s quite the opposite.
During the last two years of high school, most students spend less time learning and more time preoccupied with the college admission process. At Bard Academy at Simon’s Rock, we have a different philosophy about high school. We keep the focus on deep learning and intellectual discovery by ensuring that all students in good academic and social standing are accepted into Bard College at Simon’s Rock after the 10th grade.
Our enriched curriculum and student-centered teaching style allows students to earn an associate degree when most of their peers are just graduating high school.
To give our students the right building blocks for a full, meaningful experience, Bard Academy shares both faculty and campus resources with Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Bard Academy is one of very few private high schools with college-quality facilities dedicated to arts, science and technology, and research and scholarship, as well as health, community, and athletics.
Simon’s Rock belongs to a family of early college programs within the global liberal arts network of Bard College, and the Bard Academy approach is based on the successful examples of the Bard High School Early College programs across the country. These programs, which were founded by Simon’s Rock faculty, and which are grounded in decades of innovative early college programming at Simon’s Rock, offer students who are ready to learn and succeed an early start on both a college and life-long education.